How The Almost Mighty Have Fallen

Back in December 2007, in our end of year awards, we proclaimed Sumo.tv as our Wallpaper TV Channel Of The Year, noting that it makes "a lovely diversion if you're awake near a television on a Sunday morning". Nestled comfortably on Sky channel 144 (just next to BBC HD), it was in a perfect position to be stumbled across while the channel you're watching has cut to adverts, or you're waiting for That Mitchell And Webb Look to start.

Sadly, the lure of filthy lucre saw Sumo depart the 144 and 145 slots in our EPG in April, to make way for Discovery's "Bravo for geeks" channel DMAX. As a result, Sumo dropped down the EPG league table a little bit. If around 435 places down the list, to channel 875, qualifies as 'a little bit'. Which it doesn't. It was once next door neighbours with More4 and BBC HD. Now it has to put up with Chat Box popping around to borrow some sugar and asking Teachers TV to please keep the noise down.

All of this comes not too long after new Chief Creative Type James Brown (he of Loaded and the criminally ignored Jack magazine fame) promoted the new programming created for the fledgeling channel, stating in an interview with Digital Spy that

We have developed lots of new shows around themed content. So far it has been short attention span TV. If you are coming in and having a spliff after the pub, it's great to stick on. You are getting short hits. Now we are giving appointments to view. Before, we have not really used presenters much. Now we are bringing in three or four presenters.

And entertaining enough it was, too. Especially if there's still room for marvellous archive material like One Got Fat (specially re-edited to appear 36% more disturbing). With this in mind, what did we find when checking out Sumo.tv in it's slightly less glamorous new home?

Bah. Tits and text messages. Usually there'd either be some classic clipola, or at least 1950s B-movie shunted to the public domain on at this time of night. Well, maybe it's more impressive later in the morning, where all the archivery used to be transmitted.

Nope, it's now a Non-stop Waste £1.50 Putting Some Text On A TV Channel No-One Is Watching Channel, just like all the other ones up the shitty end of the Sky EPG. Nice to see the £1.4million parent company Cellcast received for those slots has been well re-invested then. A bit of a shame, all round, really.